The signing of Marc Giró for La Sexta has spurred public television to try to replicate the successful formula. This Thursday, taking advantage of the audience wave left by the first World Cup match, El perro andaluz, the new late show by comedian Manu Sánchez, premiered. The spirit of Marc Giró hovered over the set. It even seemed that they had reused the set. Both presenters lean towards the same side: they fiercely defend left-wing values with an elegance that could seem right-wing. Sánchez, charming and bold, wears his hair slicked back with gel and sports a well-defined, bushy beard. He uses the neutral gender to greet the audience and boasts of his identity pride: Andalusianism. The show's band has the feel of a rociero choir and the skyline of Seville dominates the set. He vindicated his origin, his temperament, and his Andalusian accent, stating that it had closed doors for him in the past, and he highlighted his condition as a hard worker: “I have always been against the stereotype of being lazy and idle that they have imposed on us out there!,” he exclaimed. Like Giró, he has made the strategy of appropriating the most hostile language to confront it his own trademark. Hence the allegory of the perro andaluz from the film with which Lorca alluded to himself and which also connects with the most stoic political sanchismo. “We are dogs without breed, without a leash, and without a muzzle!,” he insisted, boasting of his fiery and defiant attitude. He displayed the label "TelePedro" as a media brand, greeted in the four co-official languages, and waved the flags of the seventeen autonomous communities with a certain federalist spirit. In his opening speech, too long and very political, he included the UCO, Trump, Zapatero, Netanyahu, Bad Bunny, the Pope, immigration, public healthcare, Vox, and an infinite mishmash of current affairs. He quoted Blas Infante and recited Manuel Molina, integrating Andalusian poetics into the monologue. When Manu Sánchez declaims, he embraces everything from the most flamenco affectation to the airs of a tele-preacher. He is one of those presenters who address the audience by shouting and who are already hoarse by the time they start the program. Marc Giró has a very funny sarcastic motto that says traumas should be monetized. And Manu Sánchez obeyed the strategy with discipline: five minutes after starting the program, he was already talking about his testicular cancer with metastases from three years ago, describing the orchiectomy and the chemotherapy treatment. The objective, however, was to use dark humor to talk about death as a defense mechanism for those who have nothing to fear and nothing to lose: “If anyone wants to sue me, let them take me to court. But they should know that I might not even make it!,” he challenged. The first interviewee was Manu Carrasco, to celebrate and accentuate the Andalusian idiosyncrasy, but he finished the program with the classic interview of cowards who suffer to gather viewers: Miguel Ángel Revilla, former president of Cantabria, as the golden goose of ratings. A shame, because in this context, it seems you have to use the north as an insurance policy.

Chema Garrido, director of El Plural, wrote this message on X which I think very clearly illustrates the lustful relationship between politics and the media in Madrid: “The deputy director of El Español, Jorge Calabrés, defames me on Horizonte. They will never understand that I did not agree to change the editorial line of El Plural. That I rejected proposals to make another The Objective. They can't stand that I said no to their sewers. But I am not for sale”. Indeed, Iker Jiménez's program has become a kind of coven where almost everything to the left of Vox is demonized. And there, Jorge Calabrés explained that Garrido was one of the 61 journalists on the list that has delighted the fatxosfera these days and who are, presumably, the scribes that Jacobo Teijelo used to do favors for the PSOE plumber, Leire Díaz. The UCO report, as he stated, describes the director of El Plural as “impressionable”. He, on the other hand, denies ever having spoken with Teijelo. Believe whoever you want, you will do well to read today's Pareu with a pinch of salt.

Hacks, one of the most critically acclaimed comedies of recent years, recently aired its finale. In principle, from now on anyone who wants to rewatch the series will be able to do so through the HBO Max platform, which has broadcast it since its beginnings. A few weeks ago, however, the creators of the comedy, Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky, expressed their distrust regarding storage on streaming services and advocated for a return to physical media, specifically DVDs. They argue that in a time of high volatility in the audiovisual sector – with mergers like that of Warner Bros. and Paramount – it is more reliable to have a physical copy than one in the cloud, which is why they would like to bring out a complete edition of the series on DVD. The project of releasing a box set with the DVDs of all seasons, as was done years ago, is for now just an illusion in the hearts of the three creators.

No matter how much Manolo Lama and Paco González shouted themselves hoarse at the Bernabéu, Real Madrid's stadium was the scene of another defeat, in this case without footballers on the pitch: the Barcelona ceremony marked an abysmal contrast. Sobriety and good taste gave a helping hand to the saccharine cayetanismo. Complacency is nauseating, but the autoestima boost was necessary. In any case, a great contrast between the Barcelona and Madrid headlines this Thursday. The cave insisted on its obsession: Spain, Spain, Spain. "Blessed Sagrada Família, a sign of 'concord in Spain'," wrote El Mundo. It would have been nice to refer to the concord shown by the police on September 11, 1924, when they arrested Gaudí for refusing to speak Castilian. Abc also highlighted the temple's power to maintain state cohesion and La Razón, for its part, spoke of "unity," which we all know that under its masthead – that rojigualda in the corner of the flag – means, also and always, Spain. All in all, one way or another of not addressing the evidence: there are two different cultures, which are also expressed in aesthetics and the externalization of religious sentiment.

Wednesday evening saw the most apotheotic act of Pope Leo XIV's visit. The spectacle of the inauguration of the tower of Jesus was the celebration that connected most with civil society for its beauty and its link with Gaudí's architecture. Before this majestic moment, in the afternoon, public television channels delved into the events at the Sagrada Família. The broadcast on La 1 of TVE, with Pepa Bueno and Gemma Nierga, maintained a more formal tone, aware of when to speak and of the value of silence, without letting themselves be drawn into affectation. On La 2 Cat, in addition to the preliminaries with Oriol Nolis and Cristina Villanueva, they offered the ceremony with the utmost sobriety, with excellent Crisol Tuà and Anna Solé providing commentary. On TV3, the wait for the Pope's arrival with Toni Cruanyes and Núria Moliner was very well-crafted, especially the architectural content. But perhaps they wanted to do too many things at once. They exceeded themselves by dividing the screen into three and adding a graphic line that marred the image, crudely imitating Gaudí's theme. It looked like a PowerPoint template. Xavier Grasset took over with the start of the mass with an excess of rhetoric that often forgot the importance of the image and of silence. Beyond the mass, the event at the Sagrada Família connected with poetry in two moments: that of Valentina, the blind girl who explained the details of the cross of Jesus, and the moment the Pope lit a candle before Gaudí's tomb. Spirituality goes beyond sermons.The unforgettable and dazzling moment arrived with the dusk, after blessing the tower. A perfect calculation of the exact time. TV3 demonstrated its talent and quality in an excellent production. It was precise and majestic. It was as if Gaudí had foreseen the audiovisual and media potential of his great work. The fusion of light, music, and image was masterful. A show so well-crafted that it perfectly managed unforeseen events and last-minute changes. The perfect synergy with the production allowed a decisive element to finally appear that we had not yet seen since the Pope set foot in the State: mysticism. Beauty generated emotions that could be shared by citizens in a transversal way, without obliging religious convictions or the use of words. The pulses of light endowed the Sagrada Família with a soul, and the spectators, thanks to television as a privileged window, witnessed how spirituality crossed the basilica from top to bottom. Neither celebrities nor the rhetoric of experts, more old-fashioned than the Pope, are needed to move people. The use of drones with Gaudí's face contemplating his work was a symbolic way to bless the architectural epic in another way. "First love, then technique" is a message for everyone. If Gaudí were to lift his head, he would have seen the sublime hour of his work.

The change at the helm of the leading radio program in Spain, Hoy por Hoy on Cadena Ser, took effect this Thursday. Àngels Barceló surprisingly bid farewell to the audience at the end of the program, along with her team, with a message hidden in a metaphor: "It's the last Hoy por Hoy I'm doing. It's over. Be happy for me, please – she told her colleagues–. We're turning the page. I'm already the left page, and now it's time to complete the right page," she said, fueling rumors that point to her disagreement with the company's management having political connotations, which Prisa denies.

Two years ago, Apple dazzled us with the promise of a Siri capable of reading the user's email and calendar to answer complex questions about their life. That never materialized, and the company faced lawsuits for misleading advertising. Apple had crashed into a race in which OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia were already running at full speed.

3Cat's broadcast of the consecration of the Jesus tower of the Sagrada Família this Wednesday left many viewers stunned. Who is behind this television spectacle more akin to cinema? The realization of the event was handled by Paulí Subirà, who has a very long professional career in this field. Subirà already directed the television coverage of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the Sagrada Família in 2010 and has also been in charge of programs such as La nit al dia, FAQS and the electoral specials, among many other productions.

The visit of Pope Leo XIV to Madrid and Catalonia has turned public television into Vatican TV. And not only because of the hours they are dedicating to covering the event, but because of a treatment more akin to catechists than journalists, dragged uncritically by the show. The level of inflammation became grotesque in the pontiff's meeting with the diocesan community of Madrid at the Santiago Bernabéu. Any religious act practiced en masse in a stadium (it also applies to Barcelona's Lluís Companys) is of a disturbing industrialism that exposes the most fragile gears. The supposed recollection becomes a cathartic act of indoctrination through offerings of dubious results. In Madrid, the production brought the camera to the throat of David Bustamante, who sang with ecstatic shrieks that caused bewilderment. The most regrettable came with a kind of football choreography narrated by Manolo Lama and Paco González with a traditional passion that caused secondhand embarrassment. Through a ridiculous metaphor, they sang the supposed goals of the Church: “An open parish! Perfect attendance against loneliness! Goal! Goal! Goal! Goooal! [...] Next play, Paquito! Full dining room! No one asks where it comes from! They welcome you with a smile and make you feel at home! [...] Impeccable finish! Goal against inequality!” It is a disturbing infantilism.At Montjuïc it was not much different. The only thing that marked cultural differences were the Castellers de Vilafranca, with a tower so far from the Pope that the visual and emotional impact of this tradition was lost.It is understandable that the visit to Montserrat, perfectly carried out, was as it was. It is what befits the institution and television is limited to showing it. But the television wrapping of Tot es mou, with views of the Sagrada Família, was cloying. At TV3, broadcasts have forgotten the non-believing spectator or one disconnected from the Church. An audience, incidentally, for whom they have left few alternatives. On Wednesday morning, Helena Garcia Melero's program, imbued with a kind of celestial spirit, gradually lost its tone until it deflated. Public television should not force this transcendence. That is the job of the Church, not journalists. Even the program's team seemed dressed to go to a baptism. Melero, moved and excited, interviewed some experts with a discourse more suited to evangelization and indoctrination than to the desire to disseminate to the general public. They subjected us to an intensive and soporific course in catechism, but also very revealing. "The person who is visiting Catalonia and Barcelona, who need it so much these days, is precisely Jesus," they even told us. The banality and emptiness of the messages, typical of the most basic self-help, connect only with those who are already convinced. For the rest, good luck. There's less to go.

The Church has a long tradition in the business of issuing messages ambiguous enough to be interpreted at the convenience of the times (and of the other powers with which it has to triangulate). The Pope urged Catalans to be “builders of unity” and, of course, the cave has not taken long to put it on the front page. Because, in their mental framework, the word unidad is just the tip of the iceberg of the phrase unidad de la España entera. And, thus, when Abc or El Mundo print this papal exhortation in favor of unity on their respective front pages, they do so to convey that the pontiff is demanding that the independence joke cease once and for all. On the other hand, let's compare it with this subtitle from La Vanguardia: “Leo XIV asks «people from Barcelona and Catalans» to become «builders of unity», beyond polarization”. Adding that the plea is also for the people of Barcelona is important, because it deactivates the strictly national reading of the matter. And the reference to polarization reinforces the idea that we are not talking about the territorial integration of Catalonia with Spain, but about another issue that, incidentally, points out these enthusiastic headlines quite a bit, as a source and generator of eternal friction.

The Mediterranean Festival of Journalism and Photography, LASAL, will celebrate its second edition in El Masnou from June 11 to 13. The event will present a free program focused on current topics such as the war in Gaza, the climate crisis, or disinformation on social networks. One of the sessions will feature the deputy director of ARA, Carla Turró, who will have a conversation with journalist Agus Morales titled How to keep a print media alive. The head of photography for this newspaper, Ferran Forné, will also participate, in this case with a portfolio review workshop for professionals who want an external perspective on their work.

If this is the Big Ben, we are in London. If this is the Eiffel Tower, we are in Paris. And, if this is the Sagrada Familia, we are in Barcelona. There are buildings with the capacity to represent an entire city just by appearing in a photograph, and the temple designed by Antoni Gaudí occupies a prominent position in this Instagram Olympus. L’ARA has spoken with photographers who have photographed the Sagrada Familia to explain what to do (and what not to do) when capturing this icon in a souvenir snapshot.

Last week, the program El juicio on La 2 raised an unprecedented debate topic: Should feminism continue to advance? The lever that allowed them to activate this reflection was a question from the CIS in 2024 about the perception of equality policies. 44% of men answered that they believed these policies discriminated against them, and 32.5% of women did too. The origin of the problem is the same in both cases: the legitimacy of an unquestionable social right is shifted to the realm of opinion. It's not that feminism cannot be discussed. Priorities, public policies, or whatever is considered can be debated. The problem is questioning a fundamental right to create a confrontation for the benefit of spectacle. This dramatization of the conflict into a simple for and against presupposes that equality between men and women is negotiable. It is surprising that lawyer Montserrat Nebrera agreed to defend the thesis against the debate question, even though it is known that lawyers defend their clients even when they are guilty.The testimonies from El juicio raised views on feminism that grated. The artist Aldo Comas stated: “Machismo exists, but I don't think it's as big a problem as they make it out to be or as huge a drama”. Social reality is distorted from an individual opinion which, moreover, is a fallacy. That a specific man does not perceive sexism as a serious problem is no proof of its irrelevance. And this is another problem: reflections are incorporated that do not stem from a criterion of expertise but from finding a gentleman who wants to go on television to pontificate.The question “Should feminism continue to advance?” is a symptom of another circumstance. The previous week, El juicio posed: “Is Spain a racist country?” but in no case did they dare to ask: “Should the fight against racism continue to advance?” Not even the CIS dares to ask: “Have anti-racist policies gone too far?” It is difficult to imagine Nebrera taking on the television defense of these theses nor an artist coming out to comment that the problem of racism is being exaggerated and that there are other priorities. El juicio would also not have the guts to debate whether the rights of LGBTI people should continue to advance or whether the integration of people with disabilities should continue to advance. The popular trial ended with 9 votes in favor and none against. What a coincidence. In the end, everyone comes out looking great and progressive.There are questions that cause debate to cease being a tool for reflection. What they do is take advantage of a social issue to make noise and create spectacle. What this approach demonstrates is that women's rights can still be questioned and put to debate. That is why feminism needs to advance. Because public television still allows itself the right to propose debates of a fundamentally sexist nature.

Political (or spiritual, as the case may be) leaders, when preparing a public address, are clear about the key idea they would like to see replicated and amplified through the leverage of the media. If they have communication advisors, they try to place a specific headline in as many places as possible. But polarization has caused Pope Leo XIV to stumble upon the multiplication of loaves, fishes, and interpretations of his words. El País highlights that he urges bishops to fight against "the plague" of pedophilia, but El Mundo underscores his request to politicians for "moral limits to power," meaning that Pedro Sánchez should call elections once and for all. Abc focuses on "the defense of life" (i.e., against women's right to abortion) and La Vanguardia dwells on "fleeing from permanent political disqualification," because this way there's no way to negotiate peacefully with whoever is in charge, man. El Periódico focuses on "human dignity" and ARA on the criticism of the "national priority" of PP and Vox. In other words, among the newspapers from Barcelona and Madrid that highlight an element of his speech –La Razón and El Punt Avui have headlines without specific accents – there are no two ideas that are repeated: so many heads, so many miters. Communication dispersion is usually a symptom of a missed shot, but here it could also be a symptom of great intelligence: give a little feed to everyone and, look, day by day, the pope pushes forward.

Pope Leo XIV has not yet set foot in Catalonia and we are already saturated with religious events thanks to an extraordinarily devout television. TVE's La 1 is assuming the broadcast of all ceremonies with unprecedented faith and joy. To top it off, in some television slots (for example, Monday afternoon), it offered triple coverage: La 1, La 2, and the 24h channel in unison offering the same religious content.Beyond the bows and kisses on the hand at the airport, of all the experts praising the Pope with devotion and of the teenagers singing mass songs in front of the public TV microphone, the profile of the parishioner that has been shown to us in the mass events in Madrid stands out. The same way of dressing, with shared color tones, a certain social class, a very similar family style, and medals hanging from the neck that seem mass-produced. In this era of religious fervor that we have to endure and that transcends the Church itself, television shows us a believer of a certain homogeneity in appearance and conduct that distorts the idea of faith and confuses it with status and an ideological temperament.With the Pope's visit to the Congress of Deputies, television showed us another type of uniformity that is very unusual in the broadcasts that normally reach us from there. In recent years, in the hemicycle we have seen shouts, grimaces, aggressive confrontations, contempt, and unpleasant gesticulations that the deputies directed at each other. On Monday morning, beyond the red carpet and the pomp to receive the Vatican authority, in the seat of legislative power we discovered docile and quiet deputies lining up to greet the pontiff. In the hemicycle, all together in their seats, very elegant and polite. Full to the brim, even to the visitors' balconies. In some programs, they even revealed that the authorities had only spent two minutes in the stands to go through the motions. All attentive to the Pope's words and, to conclude the speech, La 1 emphasized that the seven minutes of applause the deputies had dedicated to him were a record for a parliamentary ovation. In times of polarization and maximum political tension, it turns out that the audience, from their homes, observes that the one who holds conciliation power in the State, believe it or not, is the Church. A Church that does not precisely have very democratic values. Not only because of its convictions regarding abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, or equality between men and women, but also because it is an institution that has inflicted much pain with sexual abuse and has remained silent about its crimes. What message does a Pope give to citizens, giving a sermon from the presidential lectern of Congress with all the deputies acting as obedient altar boys? An ultraconservative one, with the Church and faith as the only possible unifier, which does not correspond to that of a non-confessional state nor to the values of a large part of the citizenry.

The crisis in the media is creating information deserts at the local level, making it fertile ground for disinformation. A British study based on an analysis of 125,000 messages reveals that the 4.4 million citizens in these journalistic wastelands are three times more likely to end up spreading misleading messages originating from groups operating on social networks at a local level. According to this research, 1 in 26 Facebook messages related to news contain disinformation, and two out of five groups contained at least one piece of misleading information (and often several more) when analyzing the last 1,000 messages on any given topic. On X, the ratio of manipulated or false content exceeds 25%. The co-author of the study stated that “local disinformation is the silent killer of trust in the United Kingdom”.

The list of Netflix's most-watched series always brings surprises, and in recent days, the British miniseries The witness has unexpectedly climbed to the top of the rankings. The three-episode production, currently the most-watched series on the platform in Spain (titled El testigo and without Catalan subtitles), focuses on the real case of Rachel Nickell's murder, who in 1992 was stabbed in a park in southwest London while walking with her two-year-old son, the sole witness to the events. The story has a Catalan connection: the victim's partner and son, André and Alex Hanscombe, currently live in Catalonia, where they moved to escape the media harassment they suffered during the investigation of the case.

The President of the United States, Donald Trump, has once again demonstrated his hostility towards the media. Yesterday, Sunday, the Republican leader abruptly left an interview previously arranged for the well-known political analysis program Meet the Press, on NBC. This is not the first time Trump has made it clear that he does not like questions or being questioned, especially if female journalists do it. Here you can read the full transcript of the interview.

Relationships between two people with a large age difference often become a topic of debate. If the two people in question are your best friend and your daughter, the dilemma about the suitability of the relationship becomes very real. This is what happens to the protagonist of Alice & Steve, the dramatic comedy that Disney+ premieres on Monday, June 8, and which focuses on a lifelong friendship that is almost mortally wounded when he gets involved with her 26-year-old daughter.

The de-synodalizer who de-synodalizes him will be a good Jiménez Losantos. The good people at Libertad Digital are climbing the walls with this pope, who seeks to alter the pyramidal structure of the Church, in favor of a new polygon where the base has more importance. This "progressive drift" pushes them to publish headlines more cryptic than the mystery of the Holy Trinity: "PS (PSOE, Sánchez) hopes that a synodalized pope and a rigged World Cup will give him a judicial respite". Well, at least a few decades ago the conspiracies were Judeo-Masonic and now they are only Catholic-footballistic: we have evolved a little. The media had to resort to these ultramontane analyses because reporting the words of Leo, who has criticized the culture of polarization, would have left them in evidence. The rock of Peter on which the Church is built is imperfect, but the rock of flint on which Losantos has built his congregation deserves many adjectives, but today we will only say that it is un-Christian.